I know I should have offered a third option here - a "Don't Know"or "Maybe" - but a number of you opted for it anyway! In factthe voting was remarkably evenly balanced: 20 people said Yes; 17 said No;and 19 voted for some other answer or with provisos. Without defining one'sterms it's hard to know exactly what one is voting for! Many added extracomments, judging from which some voted Yes for the same reason as othersvoted No! More than one of the "Don't Knows" echoed MRJ's "Iam prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me".
General Echo 12 Of Pleasure Rar
Comments mostly took the form of general encouragementwith regard both to the Newsletter and the G&S web site(I'm only including a small selection here), along with a few criticisms,but one or two of you added further suggestions which I've merged with theanswers to 7, 8 and 9.
"As has been the case with its predecessor,receipt of the latest Newsletter is always a happy occasion, anticipationbetween issues never leading to disappointment. Insights into James, histhemes, and his sources have been responsible for altering my low opinionof 'Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance' and reinforcing my high opinion ofthe elusive 'Two Doctors'." "I suspect that many subscribers arenot really aware of the selectivity of the Newsletter - i.e. thatit is not concerned with Jamesian writers generally." "Just onesmall fault. Please could you make the printed words a little bit bigger."
As Jenkins, Tom Burke (David Burke's son, who seemed to spend his entirefestive season fighting off immortal foes from mysterious foreign climes,as he was one of the better things in the wildly uneven adaptation of Draculaon BBC1) appears to be giving a different sort of performance to the restof the cast, which takes a moment or two to adjust to. If Justin Hopperhas extrapolated Anderson's persona from a five word description in theoriginal, he has entirely ignored James's description of "the lawyer,a staid man, who said little at meals, being generally engaged in studyinga small bundle of papers beside his plate". This lawyer enjoys companyand friendly chat, slurps his soup and his wine and, as the proprietor'seuphemistic "feeling unwell" suggests, is partial to more thana glass of wine with his dinner. Jenkins is truly comfortable being himselfand Tom Burke's naturalistic performance reinforces the difference betweenthe envious but straight-laced Anderson and the sensuous Jenkins.
The use of the Bosch painting during this dream sequence, projected ontothe bed hangings almost in the fashion of a child's night light, is effectiveand otherworldly. However, I did wonder about the introduction of "TheGarden of Earthly Delights", which displaces "an old colouredprint of the town, date about 1820" as "the only interesting picture"(while the cast-iron stove engraving of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, thatone can't help but feel has some significance, is omitted entirely). Thechoice of painting strikes me as ill-advised, partly because it seems utterlyout of place in such a setting at such a time but, mainly, because it'ssuch an instantly recognisable piece. What might have been more effectivewould have been to show a painting of the town or the hotel itself, whichaltered subtly at night when the room's dimensions had changed; though thisobviously has echoes of yet another story.
Some of the documents Anderson uncovers give enticing hints to the natureof the inhabitant of Bishop Walgrave's house, with mentions of "curiouslights, unnatural cries and a stranger who comes and goes in the night time".However the confession of witchcraft by one "Anne Mundy" detailshorrors that don't sit easily within the confines of an M.R. James story.The suckling of a giant rat brings, instead, memories of the Babyepisode of Nigel Kneale's 1976 series, Beasts. But in Kneale's playthe nursing of the rodent-like husk comes at the end of an hour of sustainedand escalating tension and not as a throwaway line whose very incongruityprovokes bemused giggles rather than fear. Here, also, the use of MatthewHopkins, the Witch-finder General, seems more like shorthand for witch-findersand witch trials in general than anything else and adds little to the proceedings.
This scene has a strong visual echo of the one in The Stalls of Barchesterwhere Eric Chitty and Robert Hardy discuss the hanging oak, and there aremore Barchester-like moments in the scenes in the cathedral archives. Howeverthese echoes do not seem as deliberate as some in the previous production,and if A View from a Hill was informed by the Lawrence Gordon Clarkfilms, recreating key moments in homage to the earlier series, there aretimes when this production seems entirely possessed by the spirit of the1970s films and might even, at first glance, be mistaken for one.
While the archive scenes throw up some intriguing hints as to the Bishop'stenant, it is surely pretty obvious, even to those entirely new to the story,where the 'Witch-house' will be found. Therefore David Burke is given anunenviable task in filling us in on the missing details. It's a testimonyto his acting skills that he carries this off with aplomb. Burke is excellentas Gunton, never just a cipher even while layering on the exposition. Wefeel for him when his eagerness to please his scholarly guest with somehistorical details is rather rudely dismissed. We share his discomfort atasking for payment in advance following the disappearance of a previousscholar, as well as a tinge of guilty pleasure at his taking the arrogant"professor" down a peg. And his expression of hurt and dismaywhen Anderson accuses him of playing tricks at the end is very touching.David Burke seems to have become something of a regular in Richard Fell'sprojects, having appeared in the 2006 version of John Wyndham's RandomQuest, and, of course, as Patten in A View from a Hill. Personally,I would not be at all disappointed if he returned for a further appearancenext Christmas.
There have been several audio versions of M.R. James's ghost stories,of which the most notable and best loved is the series of tapes which MichaelHordern recorded in the 1980s for Argo. All of these previous productions,however, have been selections (or individual stories in more general collections).Until now, no one has taken that extra step and issued a complete audioedition of all of MRJ's tales. Craftsman Audio Books have now done so, withtwo volumes of CDs, eight discs and a data CD in each (a total of eighteenhours of listening), containing all thirty-four of MRJ's completed ghoststories (fourteen in the first volume, twenty in the second). These includeseveral, such as "The Fenstanton Witch", "The Experiment"and "The Malice of Inanimate Objects", which have never been recordedbefore, but not "A Night in King's College Chapel", arguably nota ghost story.
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A situation which is too hard degrades us through the following process: as a general rule the energy supplied by higher emotions is limited. If the situation requires us to go beyond this limit we have to fall back on lower feelings (fear, covetousness, desire to beat the record, love of outward honours) which are richer in energy.
When we are disappointed by a pleasure which we have been expecting and which comes, the disappointment is because we were expecting the future, and as soon as it is there it is present. We want the future to be there without ceasing to be future. This is an absurdity of which eternity alone is the cure.
Human injustice as a general rule produces not martyrs but quasi-damned souls. Beings who have fallen into this quasi-hell are like someone stripped and wounded by robbers. They have lost the clothing of character.
But pleasure, happiness, prosperity, if we know how to recognize in them all that comes from outside (chance, circumstances, etc.), likewise bear testimony to human misery. They should be used in the same way. This applies even to grace, in so far as it is a sensible phenomenon.
It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying and we do not want to die. We know that sin preserves us very effectively from seeing him face to face: pleasure and pain merely provide us with the slight indispensable impetus towards sin, and above all the pretext or alibi which is still more indispensable. In the same way as pretexts are necessary for unjust wars, a promise of some false good is necessary for sin, because we cannot endure the thought that we are going in the direction of evil. It is not the flesh which keeps us away from God; the flesh is the veil we place before us to shield us from him.
It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves. It is to seek pleasures in friendship and pleasures which are not deserved. It is something which corrupts even more than love. You would sell your soul for friendship.
By nature we fly from suffering and seek pleasure. It is for this reason alone that joy serves as an image for good and pain for evil. Hence the imagery of paradise and hell. But as a matter of fact pleasure and pain are inseparable companions.
Suffering and enjoyment as sources of knowledge. The serpent offered knowledge to Adam and Eve. The Sirens offered knowledge to Ulysses. These stories teach that the soul is lost through seeking knowledge in pleasure. Why? Pleasure is perhaps innocent on condition that we do not seek knowledge in it. It is permissible to seek that only in suffering. 2ff7e9595c
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